Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Fray Julián of Alcalá’s Vision of the Ascension of the Soul of King Philip II of Spain, 1645-46, Clark Art Institute

The Clark Art Institute’s Research and Academic Programme recently received a $150,000 grant from the Center for Spain in America that provides funds to host a series of fellowships over the next three to six years to encourage the study of Spanish art. The first fellowship, available for the 2018–19 academic year, is open to candidates from all nations.

The Center for Spain in America (CSA) promotes advanced study and public awareness of Spanish art and visual culture in the United States, also focusing on the history of Spanish presence and the influence of Spanish art and culture on North America. CSA cooperates with universities, libraries, archives, museums, and other educational or cultural institutions fostering academic excellence in the field of Spanish studies in the United States and supporting activities such as symposia, lecture series, exhibitions, and publications.

The CSA Fellowship at the Clark will focus on the study of all aspects of Spanish art from the early medieval period to the beginning of the twentieth century, and on the worldwide impact of Spanish art and artists. The programme is open to scholars or museum professionals researching individual Spanish artists or specific works of art; pursuing projects that include particular periods, geographic regions, subjects, or themes in Spanish art; studying the collecting and connoisseurship of Spanish art, particularly in the Americas; and examining the influence and importance of Spanish art and its reception throughout the world. It is anticipated that CSA Fellows may undertake publishing projects and/or exhibition research activities during their tenure at the Clark.

The Center for Spain in America is affiliated with the Madrid-based Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica. José Luis Colomer, a noted scholar of Spanish art, directs both organizations and has worked closely with Olivier Meslay, Felda and Dena Hardymon Director of the Clark, to establish the new programme.

The CSA Fellowship underscores the Clark’s international initiatives. Over the last decade, the Research and Academic Programme has hosted a number of leading Spanish scholars as fellows, including several curators from the Museo del Prado, Madrid. The Clark and the Prado have also forged a strong collaborative curatorial relationship. In 2010, the Clark lent its entire collection of works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir to the Prado for the highly successful exhibition Pasión por Renoir. In 2016, the Prado reciprocated by lending many of its finest works to the Clark for the exhibition Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes from the Prado.

ARTES will post more information on the fellowship as it becomes available.

The Musée Fabre is showing Art in Naples, a Golden Age from 20 June to 11 October 2015. This follows on from the highly successful Caravaggio exhibition held in 2012.

In the XVIIth century Naples – second to Paris – was the most populated city in Europe and nearly Paris’ equal as a centre of art and culture. It was in Naples, rather than in Rome, that the naturalistic forms, monochrome palette and sharply directed ‘cellar’ lighting invented by Caravaggio and introduced by him to the city by in 1606, evolved and developed, primarily in the work of Caracciolo, Stanzione and, above all, Ribera, who, with his immediate followers dominated Neapolitan art in the first half of the century. These artists, whose best paintings are of great, often tragic, intensity, coexisted with painters of highly-finished exquisite canvases, often on a small scale, such as Cavallino and Guarino, whose approach ultimately derived from an earlier, less intense and more voluptuous phase of Caravaggio’s work. But, in the second half of the century, painters such as Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano, and, in the genre of still-life, Giovanni Battista Recco, moved away from the extreme severity and concentration of the Caravaggesque tradition and gradually came to terms with the exuberance and amplitude of the Baroque with its sensual and fluid employment of colour and its grand patterns of movement, a development that culminated in the European-wide triumph of Solimena in the years around 1700.

The exhibition also illustrates the close connections between Neapolitan art and the city’s turbulent history, from the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631, through Masaniello’s revolt of 1647, to the devastating plague of 1656.

Opening times Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 7pmClosed Mondays. Open on July 14th and August 15th (Bank Holidays)Entrance fee 10€ Concessionary fee 8€

Guided tours & times every day except Monday
In June, July & August at 11am & at 4pm
In September & October at 11am, 1pm & 4pmPrices 13 € With a Pass’Agglo/Pass’Métropole 10,50€ Concessionary rate 9,50€